Carnival Discards Tenders for Water Shuttles

Carnival Cruise Line’s passengers will not be boarding a tender to get to a port anymore. Instead, they will use a water shuttle as the tender has been renamed.

It looks like a small change, but the cruise line believes it could make a difference for some guests. As brand ambassador John Heald revealed in a video on his FB page, “We are not having tenders anymore to get you ashore because it appears from research that many people do not understand what a tender is.”

And, as a result, people at guest services and other crew members are approached each day by confused travelers, most of whom had never set foot on a ship, unsure of how this process works.

According to Heald, “a tender” was a very old nautical term - it was a boat that took passengers from the vessel to the shore.

In this case, the word is just being replaced, and as a result, the fleet will use the words “water shuttle” instead of “tender.”